Why don't Android Apps close properly in BB10?

I decided I'd try loading some basic Android apps on my Z10 to experiment with a possible switch to an Android phone, specifically the Priv.

I only installed a couple, including the Amazon Prime Music app.

Then I noticed a truly horrible performance degradation, compared to my usually zippy BB10 experience, and I noticed that none of the Amazon Apps actually closed, despite my "long pressing" them to close them.

My question is whether this is
1. A general issue with the BB10 Android runtime
2. A general issue with some or all Android apps
3. An amazon issue, with their apps running in the background all the time intentionally.

Any help is appreciated. Not being able to easily and intuitively close any third-party app I choose is a deal-breaker for me.

What does that mean? The Blackberry Android runtime does NOT allow Android apps to run any services in the background. Period. As soon as the screen goes off (battery saving mode, sleep mode), ANY Android app will stop working in the background. A good example to explain this may be light in your fridge. Everytime you open the door of your fridge, the light is on, right? So we must assume, that the light in the fridge is permanently on? No, it's not. It's triggered when you open the door and it goes off when you close the door.

The only way to get an Android app to run permanently in the background is to implement Blackberry Headless mode. This must be requested from blackberry, and usually those apps are then ONLY avaliable on Blackberry World as a ported Android app (an example is Skype). All other Android apps that you download from anywhere else do NOT incorporate Headless mode and CANNOT run in the background.

Now I already hear all the "specialists" that are saying "Hey, but I'm running task manager xyz and there are a lot of services running on my device and I cleaned them and now everything is great"

Well, that simply isn't true. Running a task manager app is just like opening the door on the fridge. The light is now on. But if you close the taskmanager and the device goes to sleep, all services are stopped again.

The second thing that you should know about background services is, that against the common believe, they do not RUN in the background. They register a trigger in the Android runtime. The registering service itself is not running. Now if the Android runtime receives an Intent, it will look if a services was registered for the intent and THEN will start the service. The service will do its work (i.e. sync data) and then close again. On a Blackberry device, this will only happen if:

a) The device is NOT in sleepmode
b) The app is open OR running in an active Frame

If those conditions are not met, nothing happens. No services is started."

conite, thanks for posting that bit from Cobalt; it sure is good to know. I do consider his opinion on these matters more authoritative than those of some of the other resident "specialists" and "experts"

Thanks, Conite. I also trust Cobalt's analysis. And yet, I can reproduce a very consistent performance impact, both in terms of battery consumption and responsiveness for Android apps that still show as open in the device manager after I have long pressed to close them.

I suspect the issue is simply the MEMORY that must be allocated to maintain the state information for the open apps.

So, my original issue remains the same. Device manager clearly shows open Android apps after I have attempted to close them, and where there is no active frame, and these apps consume CPU and Battery, according to the BB10 OS reports, whether they are doing anything or not.

Thanks, Conite. I also trust Cobalt's analysis. And yet, I can reproduce a very consistent performance impact, both in terms of battery consumption and responsiveness for Android apps that still show as open in the device manager after I have long pressed to close them.

I suspect the issue is simply the MEMORY that must be allocated to maintain the state information for the open apps.

So, my original issue remains the same. Device manager clearly shows open Android apps after I have attempted to close them, and where there is no active frame, and these apps consume CPU and Battery, according to the BB10 OS reports, whether they are doing anything or not.

Posted via CB10

I suppose some of these Android apps are playing loose with triggers, and forcing the Runtime to deal with them at very short intervals.

I know Cobalt was able to reduce battery consumption from his modified Play Store app by setting update checks to longer intervals.

I guess the app does what the app does, and there is only a "take it or leave it" option for us users.